Illustration, AI-generated from the story text. Tap a panel to enlarge.

AWS grows 39%, its fastest in nearly five years, and Amazon still falls after hours

AWS revenue rose 39% to $46.0 billion in the third quarter, up from 37% the quarter before, and the unit now runs at $184 billion a year. Its operating income was $17.8 billion against $11.4 billion a year earlier. Andy Jassy said he expects AWS to grow more than 40% in both 2027 and 2028 A.

The rest of the report is why the shares fell more than 8% after the close. Earnings of $1.89 a share missed the roughly $1.97 analysts wanted, and advertising revenue of $19.6 billion came in below the $20.8 billion expected. Amazon spent $77.3 billion on property and equipment in the quarter, more than twice the $35.1 billion of a year earlier, and trailing free cash flow is now an outflow of $42.4 billion. It still expects about $220 billion in cash capex for 2026 A·B.

The release puts numbers on how much of that demand is model traffic: Fortune 500 spending on Bedrock grew nearly sevenfold from a year earlier and token volume nearly seventeenfold, with OpenAI's GPT-6 models and Anthropic's Claude 5 models both on the platform. A year ago Amazon's net income was flattered by $9.5 billion in gains on its Anthropic stake, which is why profit fell while operating income rose 61%. SourcesABB

Sources

• AAmazon.com Announces Third Quarter Results (Amazon)ir.aboutamazon.com
• BAmazon Q3 earnings (ShiftDelete)en.shiftdelete.net
• BAWS growth hits 39%, its fastest in nearly five years (GeekWire)geekwire.com

This story ran in the Afternoon Brief of October 29th 2026.